Ambush Marketing Pays Off More Than Official Sponsorship for London 2012 According to GLM

Brands that have managed to associate themselves with the Olympic Games without paying the exorbitant rights fees that come with official sponsorship seem to making more of an impact than official sponsors according to the Global Language Monitor (GLM).

The Global Language Monitor conducted its first rankings on ambush marketing (what you call unofficial sponsorship) which measures the strength of the brand affiliation between each of the worldwide partners, official partners, and official sponsors and the London Games and then compares it to competing companies that are not officially affiliated with the Games .

Sony, Subway, DuPont, Barclay Card and Lenovo are the top five companies with the highest unofficial London brand affiliation.

All have a stronger association with the Games than the official sponsors they compete against. 

They’ve achieved this by incorporating Olympic imagery into their ads, such as athletes competing in the sports being contested in London.

Paul JJ Payack, president of GLM said:”Few things in top tier consumer-facing companies occur ‘naturally’ or ‘spontaneously,’ especially when they are engineered to look that way. This is why advertisers adept at associating themselves with an event, even though they are not ‘official’ sponsors of that event, can often outperform official sponsors.”

Subway, for instance, is roughly two times as likely as official Olympics sponsor McDonald’s to be associated with the Games.

That’s mainly because swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated Summer Olympian ever, appears in Subway ads.

“Subway is acknowledged as a leader in this regard [ambush marketing] with their close ties to Michael Phelps, who in many minds personifies the Olympic brand and spirit: clean-living, hard-work, pulling himself up by his own bootstraps,” says Payak.

Some sponsors are still reaping the benefits of past sponsorship. Lenovo, for example, ended its sponsorship deal after the 2008 Beijing Games, but the company is three times as likely as the computer vendor that took its place, Acer, to be associated with the Olympics.